Frank Lautenberg: “I am pleased the Senate is poised to pass this resolution today honoring the invention of the charge-coupled device, or…”

“I am pleased the Senate is poised to pass this resolution today honoring the invention of the charge-coupled device, or CCD, which has greatly improved our level of imaging technology. In 1969, Dr. Willard S. Boyle and Dr. George E. Smith worked together at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, and created a basic design for a silicon-memory chip, known as a CCD. This breakthrough technology was crucial to advancing digital imaging technology and can be found in most imaging devices, including digital cameras and video recorders, space-based telescopes and satellites, and medical imaging devices. A CCD contains a light-sensitive chip that is able to store small amounts of charges in capacitors. A group of these capacitors create a pixel, which can be combined with other pixels to generate an image. The first CCD had just six pixels while the average camera now contains four to six million pixels. It is a credit to Dr. Boyle and Dr. Smith's innovation that this technology has been developed into the high resolution images we use in our every day lives. Each year, the National Academy of Engineering honors an engineer or engineers whose accomplishments have significantly bettered society by improving our quality of life, providing the ability to live freely and comfortably, and/or easing access to information. This year, the Academy has chosen to honor Dr. Boyle and Dr.…”